LAUSR

Kristen Whissel’s Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema is a brilliant book that shall definitely enlighten readers on cinema’s digital turn and the rise of computer-generated imagery (CGI), a field that only in the past 15 years has received the proper scholarly attention. The author utilizes a profusion of details that helps the reader to precisely focalize and understand the subject under analysis. From the very beginning of the volume the author uses a very technical vocabulary, which could sometimes slow down the reading of the volume, especially for a non-specialized reader. Nevertheless, such a vocabulary is simultaneously enlightening in its precise explanation of the cases under scrutiny and of the various types of visual effects obtained through the use of digital technologies. Both habitual “consumers” of films and experts in the field of film studies shall easily focalize in their minds the various cinematic scenes that are examined by Whissel and shall probably search their DVD libraries to watch them again. Visual effects are considered by the author not merely in terms of decorative spectacles intended to enhance the visual pleasure of the audience. Rather, they are read through a critical argument (supported by authoritative quotations from critics in the fields of cinema and visual studies) that attributes them the function of emblems. In this sense, visual effects are interpreted as vehicles for different (and complex) concepts and thematic concerns: they represent and summarize a film’s “key themes, anxieties and conceptual obsessions,” but they also help to create an intertextual dialogue with other films. A fundamental primary source is Andrea Alciati’s 1531 volume Emblematum Liber, the first emblem book reproducing mythological and religious figures—such as Icarus falling from the skies (an emblem for reckless ambition) and Proteus, the shape-shifting sea god who foretold the future to those who could capture and hold him throughout his transformations—through a tripartite structure that combines an image, an epigram, and a text elaborating on the image’s allegorical and moral significance. Whissel then examines the interplay between spectacular image and dialogue, but also between visual image and narrative, setting, miseen-sc ene, sound effects, choreography of the fights and development of character psychology, illustrating in each case the special visual effects’ significance and allegorical import. Such a rigorous analysis is supported by the use of numerous examples, mainly consisting in the examination of one or more scenes from different films, the majority of which is